America, let's make this happen!
2024-08-18 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Online Event
This September, I’m heading out on an eleven-date tour of (parts of) North America. The tour marks the paperback release of At Work in the Ruins, but there are deeper reasons for making this journey: to meet more of the people to whom the work I’m doing matters, to bring together conversations of consequence, and to see what possibilities we can set running between us.
These events are being brought together by local organisers who have found resonance in my writing, a group of friends, a likeminded organisation or a pocket within a larger institution.
To make this long journey worthwhile, we’ll need all the energy and support it’s possible to bring together around it – so this is an invitation to anyone who wants to help organise and spread the word.
Join me on a call this Sunday when I’ll share more about what we have planned and how you can get involved.
Here’s the Zoom link to join the call.

European Ecovillage Gathering, Ängsbacka, Sweden
2024-08-20 - 2024-08-25 | Ängsbacka, Nyeds-backa 511, Molkom, 655 61, Sweden
I’ll be giving the Saturday keynote at this year’s European Ecovillage Gathering, a five-day event taking place at the Ängsbacka community in Värmland.

Omställningsforum: Gathering for a Resilient Society
2024-10-11 - 2024-10-13 | Kulturoasen, Hågavägen 190, Uppsala, 75263, Sweden
I’ll be giving the Saturday keynote at this year’s annual conference of the Swedish Transition Network which is happening just down the road from us in Uppsala. The theme of the gathering is DET GODA LIVET/BUEN VIVIR/SUMAK KAWSAY and I’m calling my contribution “A World Worth Living For”.

Worlds Worth Living For | Kairos Club
2024-10-29 18:30 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | Kairos Club, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4TG, United Kingdom
Kairos is a new London space exploring radical ideas for social and cultural change in response to the climate and nature crises. At Kairos all discussion begins with the assumption that humanity is entering a period of unprecedented transformation, whether we’re shaping it or merely responding.
In this talk with discussion, I’ll explore the conversations that At Work in the Ruins has led me into and share my latest thinking. Together we’ll discuss how to release resources from existing systems so as to contribute to the work of the small path, the examples of new cultural and economic practices in which I’ve been finding clues for what comes next – and how we might scale these out, without falling into the traps that often accompany attempts at scaling up.
BOOK TICKETS

Time to Stop Talking About Climate Change? | UnHerd Club
2024-10-31 19:00 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | UnHerd Club, 2-6 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
At London’s UnHerd Club, I’ll be talking about the experiences that led me to write At Work in the Ruins and how we rethink our ways of talking about the trouble that the world is undoubtedly in.
Book Tickets

Pockets, Patterns & Practices: A five-week online series (Wednesday group)
2024-11-06 20:15 - 21:30 (Europe/Stockholm) | Online Event
In this autumn’s online series with a school called HOME, we’ll be exploring the pockets, patterns and practices that contribute to the work of regrowing a living culture. This is a chance to gather with others who are drawn to this work.
Each week, there’s a 75-minute teaching session in which I give a talk followed by a discussion, then participants are welcome to stick around for the “afterparty” where we loosen things up and there’s a chance to get to know each other better. The teaching sessions are recorded, so there’s a chance to catch up if you can’t be with us live each week, and participants are also invited to join the Long Table, an ongoing community open to those who have taken part in one or more of our online series.
Read more & book your place

Pockets, Patterns & Practices: A five-week online series (Thursday group)
2024-11-07 10:15 - 11:30 (Europe/Stockholm) | Online Event

Reimagining Rural | HDK-Valand Steneby
2024-11-28 13:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Stockholm) | HDK–Valand Steneby & Online Event, Hemslöjdsvägen 1,, Dals Långed, 666 95, Sweden
I’m looking forward to visiting HDK Steneby, the rural, craft-oriented campus of the University of Gothenburg’s School of Design & Crafts, where I’ll be giving the keynote at Reimagining Rural, a public symposium. I’ve promised them a talk under the title, “I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country)”.
To register for the seminar, please email tom.cubbin@hdk.gu.se with REIMAGINING RURAL in the title. Please write if you plan to attend in person or via ZOOM. A link will be sent a day prior to the event for Zoom participants.
Full details
The polycrisis of modernity has resulted in divergent possibilities for makers and artists whose practice is based in rural localities. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in material-based practices that contribute to caring for the land and communities outside of urban centers. However, dominant epistemologies within art education and practice continue to privilege the urban gaze, which means that there is a need to continue to develop place-based practices that can probe the complex intersections of rural histories, cultures, ecologies and futures.

In this symposium, we invite speakers whose artistic and educational practices are extending our understanding of how to engage with questions of community, land-use and meaning making in the rural. There will be an opportunity to join a conversation with one of the speakers later during the afternoon.

Taking place during the year of the 90th anniversary of Stenebyskolan, this symposium seeks to reconnect to the spirit of the school’s founding in 1934. In providing training for young artisans, Erland Borglund’s aim was to see craft as cultural force in enabling a coherent and economically resilient Dalsland. How can today’s practices enable us to renew that mission as an international community in a rural setting?

Dougald Hine – I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country)

Sarah Hughes – Fantasy is a Place where it rains

Kjetil Fallan – Groundwork: Materials and Landscapes in Design History

Onkar Kular: Luleå Biennial 2022—Craft & Art

How Do We Find Our Place in a Time of Crisis? | Evolve Magazine
2024-11-29 18:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Stockholm) | Online Event
I’ll be joining Elizabeth Debold of the German magazine, Evolve, for a three-hour online exploration of what it might mean to find our place and “make good ruins” in these times.
READ MORE & BOOK

At Work in the Ruins Seminar | Lund University
2024-12-03 13:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | Department of Arts & Cultural Sciences, Lund University, LUX:C327, Helgonavägen 3, Lund, 223 62, Sweden
The Environmental Humanities research node at Lund University has organised a seminar around my work.
MORE DETAILS
